An undated handout picture from Yeti Project Japan, received on October 20, 2008, shows what is alleged to be the footprint of a Yeti (left) measured on the Dhaulagiri mountain and compared to a human footprint (right). A team of Japanese adventurers reports they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary Yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet.
(AFP/HO)

KATHMANDU (AFP) – A team of Japanese adventurers say[s] they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet.

“The footprints were about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human’s,” Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Japan, told AFP in Kathmandu on Monday.

Takahashi was speaking after he returned with his seven-member team from their third attempt to track down the half-man-half-ape, tales of which have gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades.

Despite spending 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV — a 7,661-metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of yetis in the past — the team failed in their prime objective of capturing one on film.

But Takahashi said the footprints were proof enough.

“Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those,” he said.

“We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the local tell make us sure that it is not imaginary,” he added.

The team had set out nine motion-sensitive cameras in an area where Takahashi saw what he thought was a yeti during a previous expedition in 2003.

“It was about 200 metres away in silhouette. It was walking on two legs like a human and looked about 150 centimetres tall,” said Takahashi.

Despite their lack of success this time, the team plans to continue the quest.

“We will come back as soon as we can, and we will keep coming back until we get the yeti on film,” said Takahashi.AFP

About Loren ColemanLoren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

The photo on the left of the alleged Yeti footprint seems to be more humanlike and human-sized than Yeti-sized. It could be one of those monks who like to walk around barefoot up in the Himalayas. Still, interesting article.

It’s probably not from a monk unless he had his big toe curled under his foot – hard to tell, though it doesn’t really look like there’s enough of an indent for that. But I agree it’s hard to tell much about it. Better than most of those vids of brown hairy things in the trees though. And who knows – perhaps the Yeti is a sort of human…

I guess you would have to be there, looking at that long line of prints, and not seeing any way that any combination of sun, wind, moisture and the funny things animal feet and snow do could come up with any animal you know about.

And to me there it is. How long was this trackway? is to me essential to know. It’s a standard tracker’s aphorism that any animal, sooner or later, can make a perfect example of a different animal’s track. But a long line of tracks that look like nothing known to exist, every one of them being a known animal’s track, monkeyed with by the elements?

I was under the impression that a footprint (of anything) in that condition in the snow means it’s old (the footprint). It has been at least a few days (if not more) and rather useless. I am a little skeptical about this one. The footprint looks skinny and short. True, this could be a juvenile (especially seeing how we know nothing of their lifestyle), but I doubt a juvenile would be walking around out there by itself.

@ shumway – I thought it looked absurdly skinny at first also, but I think that’s just a bad angle; if not it doesn’t even look like a hominoid. From the description it does certainly sound too short for a normal Yeti though